BP's Hayward 'Gets Life Back' in Demotion

BP CEO Tony Hayward, whose repeated ripostes to thrusting congressional questions Thursday included “I am not a drilling engineer” and "not an oceanographic scientist," isn’t a CEO any more, either — at least not with managerial duties, after a BP shake-up Friday afternoon.

Hayward’s managerial duties were pulled from under him in the same sweep that announced that BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, who outraged Gulf residents with the gaffe that BP cares for the “small people,” will assume major PR duties, according to Britain’s Sky News.

The shake-up comes two months into a disaster after a BP oil rig exploded, killing 11, and burned before sinking and starting to spew millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico.

Although Svanberg defended the beleaguered Hayward, who was widely disparaged at one point for saying he “wants his life back,” he said such comments have hurt the company’s PR damage control efforts.

And the chairman told Sky News that Hayward “is now handing over the operation to Bob Dudley."

Dudley has been BP’s managing director since 2009, before which he was president and chief executive of TNK-BP, Russia's third-largest oil and gas company, according to Sky News.